Shifting Gears
by Jeanie205
Summary: For anyone who has ever wondered what Logan Echolls was doing the day that bus went over the cliff, this little tale is for you.


**A/N: There's always been that unanswered question about what Logan was doing when that bus went over the cliff, how he found out, how he reacted. The flashback-heavy timeline of Normal is the Watchword seemed to leave that point very much up in the air, but I think it probably went down something like this. If you think that canon tells us otherwise, then just regard this little tale as maybe how it **_**should**_** have happened.**

**This is my first VM fic, and I want to thank ELSchaaf for encouraging me to finish it and for betaing the heck out of it.**

When he was a very little boy, he'd been fascinated by school buses. The enormous rolling yellow boxes seemed like magic carriages, where everyone inside was safe and happy, and everyone who was left on the outside had to face the terrors of the world without any magic at all.

_Sesame_ _Street_. That's where he'd seen them. Certainly nothing as ordinary as a school bus had ever rumbled through any of the neighborhoods he'd lived in, where children were transported to their privileged institutions of learning by chauffeurs, car services, or the occasional mom looking to earn her stripes as a "hands-on" parent.

One of his nannies - the pretty one who smelled really good and had kind brown eyes - noticed his obsession, and when she came back from a day off she presented him with a wide smile and a toy school bus. His mother wanted to take it away, incensed that "the help" could think that her son might want something that she hadn't already provided. But he cried so inconsolably that, in the end, he was allowed to keep it.

One day, after his father had returned home from wherever, he heard a lot of shouting and door-slamming, but he hid in his closet like he always did, and this time he clutched his bus. The pretty nanny who smelled good left without saying goodbye, and soon he had a new nanny. (He never noticed that this new nanny, and all the ones that came after, neither smelled good nor had kind eyes.)

He missed his old nanny, but he still had his school bus and he played with it constantly, rolling it around his room as though it were a race car and not a stuffy old bus. He slept with it under his pillow and tried to take it with him everywhere. It became his talisman, his totem, and he wanted to believe that it would keep all the bad things away. (Although when he got a little bit older, he realized that wasn't true.)

A couple of years later, when he started school himself, he thought that just maybe he'd finally get to ride in one of the big yellow buses, but the thought had barely flickered to life before he knew it would never happen. And sure enough, when the big day came, it was his dad's regular driver who was waiting at the front door to take him to school. He was a little disappointed, but if he couldn't ride on the big bus, he knew he at least had the little one, carefully hidden in the bottom of his backpack.

His disappointment over the school bus didn't last long, though, because it was on that very day that he met another little boy and he knew instantly that they'd be friends forever and that nothing would ever come between them.

And for a very long time nothing did.

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One day, when he was almost twelve years old, his mother asked him to go through his old toys, his baby toys, and put aside the ones that he didn't want anymore so that she could donate them to some underprivileged kids. He had no idea what "underprivileged" meant, and he really didn't care. He whined that he and Duncan were going to start surfing lessons that day, and he didn't have time.

"For heaven's sake, Logan," his mother complained. "I don't ask you to do much at all. You can make time to do this and still get to your surfing lesson. I don't want to have to move all your old toys to the new house if they're just going to sit in a box in the back of your closet.

"Or," she added craftily, "I can go through everything and decide what to throw out. How would that be?"

"No! I'll do it myself!" His mother going through his stuff? Hell, no! That was never gonna happen.

His mother tried very hard not to smile. "That probably would be best."

Logan wanted to get it done as quickly as possible, so he could meet up with Duncan a little early, but it's hard to give up once-cherished possessions, which meant the purging took a lot longer than it might have. He'd put aside any number of action figures and micro machines when he made what could have been a very embarrassing find. Good thing no one had been in his closet lately, he thought.

"Holy shit! All these Beanie Babies!" He looked around guiltily, hoping his mother hadn't heard him. She'd really been on his case about his language lately. But, hell(!), what did she expect? He wasn't a kid anymore.

She'd threatened to tell his dad if he didn't "clean up his act." That's how she put it. "Clean up his act." What the hell(!) did that mean, anyway? But he knew she'd never rat him out. Just like he never mentioned all the bottles that sat on the shelf in the very back of her closet.

His mind veered away. He didn't want to think about any of that.

With the discovery of the potentially humiliating stash of Beanie Babies, Logan thought he was done with his task. But as he transferred them into a brown paper bag that he'd found in the kitchen (all the better to conceal them from Trina's prying eyes and goading mouth), he felt something hard right in the middle of all that squishy softness.

He stared down at the little yellow school bus in the palm of his hand. Oh, yeah, he thought. Oh, yeah. He'd had it so long that he couldn't remember exactly when he got it. He'd forgotten all about the sweet-smelling nanny with the pretty face who'd bought a cheap toy for the son of a multi-millionaire.

But as his hand closed around it, his thumb automatically caressing the smooth curves that defined the bus's roof, he was flooded with a sense of well-being. He remembered how the bus had always made him feel safe. Protected. It was a lie, of course. He knew that now. Nothing, certainly not a toy, could keep him safe. But it wasn't the bus's fault, he thought. He put the bus into one of the many pockets in his khaki cargo shorts and left the piles of discarded toys for his mother.

As he was leaving his room he had another happy thought. His whole family was moving to Neptune in a few weeks, where Duncan Kane's family lived. That's why they were getting surfing lessons. But best of all, they were both going to public school! He could hardly believe it when his dad had told him. He'd gone on and on about just being "regular people," but Logan had stopped listening to his bullshit by then. All he could think of was that he wouldn't have to wear that lame-ass uniform anymore.

But now he had another thought as he fingered the toy in his pocket. Public schools. Didn't they have, like, school buses?

xxxxxxxxxx

Logan was disappointed to find that although his middle school in Neptune was, in fact, served by the big yellow buses, the kids in his neighborhood never rode them.

"Why the hell would we ride the bus to school?" Dick Casablancas asked. "That's for kids who don't have drivers and shit. Not the 09ers."

"The whats?" What the hell was an 09er? He thought Casablancas was kind of an ass but he seemed to have the place wired.

Dick wasn't the only new friend that Logan had made in Neptune. He finally got to meet Duncan's older sister, Lilly. When Duncan had been a boarder at their school in LA, he'd talked about Lilly constantly, but she'd never come for a visit. When they finally did meet, Logan found Lilly a little confusing. She already had boobs and stuff and it seemed like they were always right in his face. When that happened, his hands got clammy and his collar got tight and he could feel his face getting red.

He tried to ask Duncan why his sister acted like that, but every time he did, Duncan got this weird look on his face, like he didn't know what Logan was talking about. So he did his best to shrug it off. After all, Duncan had been his best friend for as long as he could remember, and he didn't want to make him mad.

He also met Lilly's best friend,Veronica Mars, who was in their grade at school. He felt a lot more comfortable around Veronica. Maybe that was because he didn't have to worry about her sticking her boobs in his face, because she didn't have any. Veronica was pretty short, and they teased her about it constantly, but she always had a big smile on her face, and she had an even bigger personality.

Veronica almost never kept her opinions to herself, and she certainly didn't bother when it came to Logan's obsession with the yellow school buses.

"Why would you want to ride in one of those dirty, smelly things if you don't have to?" she asked laughingly, squinting up at him like he'd lost his mind. "Some of the kids spit gum on the floor of the bus and it gets all over the bottom of your shoes. Yuck! And there are no seat belts."

Veronica was very safety conscious.

"How would you know?" He couldn't let her get away with ragging on him like that. "Doesn't your dad drop you off at school?" Her dad was the local sheriff, which Logan thought was really, really cool.

"Usually." Her grin got even wider. "But sometimes he's too busy arresting speeders or throwing the riffraff in jail, and then I have to take the bus."

"Your mom can't take you?"

Veronica's smile faded slightly. "Um, no," was all she said.

But despite his disappointment over the school bus, Logan liked Neptune and his new friends. He liked public school. He didn't have to wear a uniform, and the students didn't have to shuffle through the hallways in silence, like a bunch of freaking monks. (And his dad wasn't home nearly as much as he had been when they'd lived in LA. There was always that.)

When Logan, Duncan and Veronica were in the last year of middle school ("Eighth graders rule!"), he finally got to take that magic ride in the yellow bus. By this time, of course, he'd done a lot of growing up. Lilly's boobs no longer made him nervous; instead they provoked a new reaction that he liked a lot better. He and Duncan and Lilly and Veronica had started spending a lot of time together, just the four of them, even though Lilly was a year older and already in high school. Sometimes he thought that they were like their own little family.

But today it would just be the three middle-schoolers, on a field trip that their eighth grade art class was taking to a museum in San Diego. Logan thought that art was kind of cool (maybe even better than cool, but he wasn't letting any of his friends know about that), and he'd been to museums and galleries all over the world with his mom. He'd even been to that very museum in San Diego. But he was still excited about this trip. More excited, in fact, about the trip than about the destination.

Veronica teased him non-stop as the three of them boarded the bus.

"Here it is at last, Logan. The famous Neptune School District magic chariot," she giggled. "Marvel at the comfortable seating arrangement," her arms waved grandly as they squeezed into the cramped seats, "the generous leg room," as Logan tried to fold his long legs into the modest space available, "the panoramic view," as they peered out of the small filthy windows, "and the climate-controlled comfort," as they made an attempt to open one of those minuscule windows to let in some fresh air.

By now, Veronica was laughing so hard she'd have fallen off the seat if she weren't so small.

"Yah, yah, yah, Mars, you're such a riot." But Logan was smiling, too. Laughing at himself just a little bit. It didn't really matter that the magic yellow school bus was a bit of a disappointment. The prospect of joking around with Veronica for the duration of the trip more than made up for it. She'd been talking a mile a minute ever since they boarded, and he'd dropped down beside her without even thinking about it, never noticing Duncan's look of disappointment as he slid into the seat behind them.

xxxxxxxxxx

It was almost four years before Logan Echolls had another opportunity to ride in a school bus, and by then, they'd lost all their charm. And he no longer believed in magic.

By then, his first girlfriend, the very same Lilly Kane, had been murdered.

By then, his mother had done a swan dive right off the Coronado Bridge.

By then, well, in a fascinating plot twist he didn't think Dickens or Shakespeare or even one of those ancient Greek dudes could top, it turned out his abusive bastard of a father was actually a _murdering_ abusive bastard, who'd managed to fuck and then murder Logan's girlfriend.

By then, he'd somehow wound up as the chief suspect in the murder of some spic biker that he hardly knew and couldn't give two shits about.

And by then, because he himself had become a jackass of unparalleled magnitude, he'd screwed up the only really good thing that had happened to him in a long, long time, and had lost Veronica Mars before he'd even really had her.

In some kind of weird karmic twist, Veronica had turned to Duncan. Oh, they'd been there before, and it hadn't seemed to work, but maybe this time they'd get it right. (As long as Duncan didn't do something to fuck it up.) He knew that Duncan probably deserved her, and that he himself did not. But that didn't make it hurt any less.

When Woody Goodman invited the _Navigator_ staff on a field trip to Shark Baseball Stadium, at first Logan had thought, why the hell not? Anything that liberated him from the claustrophobic halls of Neptune High School for the day, well, he was there. And on a school bus, no less. He just about remembered his early fascination with them, and there it was in all its yellow glory, a slightly newer version of the eighth grade chariot. But as he stood there leaning against the side of the bus, he knew he'd never make it through the day.

Veronica had arrived. With Duncan. And when he saw them, he bailed. Just fucking bailed. But not before he could stop himself from saying something incredibly stupid. Could he be any more pathetic, he wondered, giving one last lingering look at Neptune High's newest golden couple, gloriously reunited. He thought he might actually puke.

Humiliation was hot on his heels then and he knew that he sure as fuck wasn't going back into the school. In ten seconds flat, he was inside his personal yellow chariot and had peeled out of the parking lot. He hit the street without a glance in either direction, and never heard the screeching brakes, the honking horns, or the shouts of "Fucking asshole!" that were coming at him from all sides. He was thinking only about the flask in his glove box, wondering how full it was and if he should go home first for a re-supply.

Logan made his way to the outskirts of the city, and rolled onto the Pacific Coast Highway heading north, his mind a complete blank. He'd been barreling up the coast when he blinked, suddenly aware that he couldn't just drive all day, not if he wanted to continue to partake of the contents of the flask now concealed between his thighs as he drove along at breakneck speed.

He wracked his brain for a suitable destination, finally remembering a small beach so far north of Neptune that it was almost, but not quite, outside of Balboa County. He and Dick, always on a quest for a new spot, had tried to surf there once, but it hadn't met their expectations. But as a hideout for a few hours while he numbed himself into unconsciousness? Perfect.

He pulled into the tiny parking lot and was out of his truck and running up the beach practically before the brakes had completed their job. Movement, that's what he needed. Anything to keep his brain from remembering what he'd said to her. But it didn't work; it never did. He could never run fast enough or far enough to escape all the stupid things he did and said.

"_I'm going to miss you." _

Yep, that's what had come out of his mouth. With Duncan right there, because what he'd really needed for this pathetic confession was an audience. In case they hadn't yet figured out that his miserable heart was broken, and that he was a wretched mess.

"_I'm going to miss you."_

He cringed now when he remembered the look of sadness in Veronica's eyes. Or was it pity? Because, hey, that's just what he wanted. Her pity.

And Duncan. He shook his head now, swallowing another mouthful from the silver flask that was clutched tightly in his hand. How was it that the guy who'd been his best friend from kindergarten had now become his romantic rival. His mouth quirked in wry amusement as the thought formed. _Romantic rival? _ Christ almighty! Maybe he could get a job writing for that soap opera his mother used to be on, years and years ago, long before she offed herself. Long before she left him to his own devices.

Duncan hadn't said anything, of course. He was too much a gentleman, too well-versed in how to handle himself in any situation.

"Don't gloat," Jake had probably drummed into him. Not when you win the race, or the prize, or the election. Or the girl.

But he'd seen it anyway, the smug look, and hoped Duncan understood. There would never really be any way to win Veronica. She'd be with Duncan for just as long as she felt the relationship was easy and safe, and not for one second longer.

_"I'm going to miss you." _

When what he should have said was, "Didn't take you long to move on, did it?" Or maybe, "You're such a bitch and he's welcome to you."

Trouble was, he didn't believe it, any of it. He knew damn well that he was the world's biggest fuck-up, and that he couldn't blame her for giving up on him. Or for trying to be happy.

And he couldn't pretend that he wouldn't take her back in a second if she'd only change her mind.

The sun, and the stress, and the contents of the flask were all beginning to have an effect, and Logan suddenly felt like his skin was burning. He'd lived in SoCal all his life, so he knew he needed to find at least _some_ shade or he'd have to leave the beach. He turned on his heel, scanning the far end of the beach where it met the paved area, and noticed a small outcropping of rocks that looked like it might provide some shelter.

He was tall, but not excessively so, so there was just enough room for him to fold himself beneath the largest of several enormous boulders. He removed his outer shirt, leaving on just his t-shirt, and rested his head languidly against the rocks.

So what the fuck _was_ he gonna do? Veronica was with Duncan. It was a fact, and he was going to have to deal with it without making pathetic declarations of devotion every time he saw her. God, he could imagine what Lilly would have thought - and said - if she'd still been around. She'd have screamed that he was a wimp and a wuss and a pussy and told him to grow a pair.

He chuckled to himself, just thinking about Lilly's reaction to his declaration that morning as he tipped the last of the fiery liquid down his throat. Yep, Lilly would have been disgusted, maybe - _probably_ - called him a girl, and told him to get over it.

He stretched his long legs out and yawned, folding his outer shirt into a makeshift pillow. Turned out he'd had just enough liquor in that flask to produce the desired effect, and he rested his head on the shirt he'd wedged between two smooth granite boulders and fell asleep.

When he woke up, he wasn't sure how long he'd been out, but it must have been a while because the sun was definitely lower in the sky. And where before there'd been only the sound of the waves crashing, with maybe the occasional honk of a seagull looking for lunch among the detritus left on the beach, he could now distinctly hear voices. Young voices, he judged, so it must be mid-afternoon at least or their owners would still be in school.

There were two of them, he thought, as they approached the area where he was hidden from view among the rocks. The vague murmurs eventually evolved into distinct words as they closed in on his temporary shelter. He was still half asleep, pondering the fact that he really needed to take a piss - and soon - when their words suddenly broke through his consciousness.

"Yeah, he said it was unbelievable! The fucking bus just flew right off the cliff!"

"So'd they all die? Who were they?"

"I dunno. Who the hell knows? From Neptune High, I think my dad said."

The voices had already passed and were a dozen yards up the beach before the words finally registered in Logan's brain. He grabbed his shirt and stumbled out from the rocks, yelling at the two boys, both in their early teens, who were moving at a fast clip toward the parking lot.

"Hey! Hey, wait up!"

Both heads turned as he continued to walk unsteadily in their direction.

"What bus? What bus went over a cliff?"

"Man, get away from us. You are so wasted! Where the hell'd you come from, anyway?"

"The bus. What about a bus? Where did you hear about the bus?" Logan was frantic now, gesticulating wildly, barely concealing his concern beneath his usual aggressive posture.

"What the fuck? Do we look like CNN...?" One of the boys took a hostile stance, facing Logan directly and planting his feet firmly in the sand.

But something in Logan's face must have caught the other boy's attention, because his voice gentled as he tried to answer the question.

"Look, man, we don't know anything more, except the bus went over the cliff on its way back from Shark Stadium."

Logan fell back as if he'd been punched, nearly overbalancing himself into the sand.

_Veronica!_

His brain was still addled from the booze and the sun and - oh Christ! he really needed to take a piss before he wet his pants - but he had to find out what had happened. He ran to his car, quickly turning on the radio, but he couldn't find a news station. _Where the hell were all those talking heads when you needed them? _He slammed at the dials in frustration.

He briefly considered heading for home and the shitload of TVs he had there, but he knew he was still too drunk to drive safely. Instead, he ran across the street from the beach to where several small commercial buildings had formed a ragtag sort of strip mall. He stuck his head into the doorway of the first shop he came to, one of those stores specializing in cheap beach paraphernalia that seemed to dot every beachside road in America.

"Hey, you got a TV?"

"What?"

"A TV? Do you have a TV in here?" Logan's patience, never very robust, was beginning to wear thin.

The confused store clerk had barely got the "No" out of his mouth before Logan had moved on quickly to the next building. It looked like a diner, so he had some hope of success.

Several pairs of eyes turned in his direction as he threw open the door, nearly slamming it back on its hinges. It was practically vibrating, but he barely noticed either the abused door or the curious faces of the several patrons who were seated at the counter.

"You got a TV in here?" Logan made an effort to curb his hostile tone.

The woman behind the counter, middle-aged, worn-down, her gray hair straggling out from beneath the obligatory hairnet, eyed him suspiciously.

She shook her head in the negative. "We got great burgers, kid, but you'll have to provide your own entertainment."

He had a sudden thought. "A bathroom. Do you have a bathroom?"

Her eyes narrowed as she took in the state of his rumpled clothing. And her nose wrinkled as the smell of alcohol that surrounded him finally reached her. She crossed her arms in front of her and stared at him balefully.

"Customers only."

He reached into his wallet, took out a ten-dollar bill, and slapped it onto the counter.

"Coffee, black. To go." He'd finally noticed the Restrooms sign and headed towards it.

When he returned, he grabbed the coffee that was waiting for him on the counter in its styrofoam cup, while the woman tried to hand him his change.

"Keep it. Buy some paper towels for the Men's Room. Where the hell is there a TV around here?"

She cocked her head. "You can try next door, but..." Whatever else she'd been about to say was lost as Logan ran out the door, half-spilling his coffee as he tried to drink it on the fly, and headed into the next building.

_O'Malley's Pub,_ the sign said, but if this was a pub, then the _River Stix_ was a Gentlemen's Club. The place was a dive, the smell of stale beer was overwhelming, and he had a fleeting thought that he must fit right in, odor-wise.

He didn't even have to ask about a TV, because he could see it himself as soon as he walked in, as well as the half-dozen customers intently watching the baseball game.

"_The count is three and two, and there's only one more pitch standing in the way of an important win for the Padres,"_ droned the announcer, the distinctive soft rumble of every professional baseball game in full evidence in the background.

Without another thought, Logan ran to the end of the bar, leaped across it, grabbed the remote from its resting place, and punched in the digits for the local news station.

There was an enraged roar from behind him, but he was too intent on his goal to notice. The scene switched immediately to the Channel 4 news desk, but Logan had time for only a brief look at the banner that crawled along at the bottom of the screen before he was hauled up from behind by two beefy arms.

"Who the fucking hell are you?!" The bartender looked like he might be a candidate for next month's issue of _Inked._

The screen was switched immediately back to the ballgame, but the semi-inebriated baseball fans had missed that deciding moment, and they were seriously pissed.

"I needed to find out about the bus crash," Logan tried to explain. "People are dead. People are dead." And now his voice was no more than a whisper.

"Listen, you fucking asshole, if you don't want to be next, you'll get the hell out of here right now."

Logan was headstrong, but he wasn't stupid. He raced out of the bar as the words from the TV screen flashed over and over in his head.

_Nine Dead as Neptune High School Bus Plunges Over Cliff._

Nine dead. Was that...everyone? His mind went blank as he tried to remember how many people had gone on the field trip. Then he was running for his car, knowing he'd have to make it home regardless of his impaired state. He told himself that he'd take it slow, that he'd had some coffee. On the thought, he tipped the last of the sludgy brew into his mouth and threw the paper cup into the street.

_Veronica would have killed me if she'd seen me do that. She'd have told me to drag my entitled ass over to the trash can and dispose of it properly. _ He did not miss the irony in this line of thought as he slammed into the car, pulled out of the lot, and turned back onto the Pacific Coast Highway, headed south this time, driving just as fast as he dared.

Logan's homeward trip was hampered by conflicting goals: reaching Neptune as soon as possible and avoiding being arrested for DUI. _Yeah, she'd kill me for this, too, _he thought. She'd always been so afraid, wanted him to be safe.

_Hey, maybe I can get myself killed in a car accident as I'm rushing to find out if she's okay. And then it will turn out that she didn't die after all. Great plot. Oh, wait. I think that guy Shakespeare already ran with that idea. Too bad, Logan. Not original. And besides, Veronica and I are not exactly Romeo and Juliet. _

Returning into the teeth of rush hour traffic made the trip excruciatingly slow, and it took every ounce of Logan's will not to simply stop dead in the middle of the road and mutter "Veronica" over and over again, as though it were a prayer or an incantation. But he forced himself to continue driving, forced himself not to expend every available brain cell trying to recall exactly how many people were on that bus, forced himself to breathe, forced himself to hope. That last was the hardest, because it was against his nature and his experience to hope.

By the time he pulled into his driveway, he was exhausted from the sheer amount of energy it had taken him to make the drive safely. But still, he ran into the house and up to his room as soon as he'd managed to unlock the door. He could be tired later. Shit, this was Veronica. And he simply had to know. _He needed to know._

It took him a few infuriating minutes to locate the remote in a pile of dirty clothes, then just seconds to find the right channel before he settled himself onto the floor, his head resting against the foot of the bed. They were still covering the story, would probably be covering it all night, but the news crawl at the bottom of the screen had not changed.

_Nine Dead as Neptune High School Bus Plunges Over Cliff_

The news anchor kept repeating that they couldn't release the names of the dead until all the families had been notified. Logan had one brief thought about giving Keith Mars a call, but then remembered the circumstances of their last conversation, his arm twisted behind his back and his face pushed against the wall of the Mars living room. And his courage failed him.

Veronica just _couldn't _be dead. She was the most alive person he'd ever known. Though physically small, everything else about her was larger than life. He'd known it the moment he'd met her.

A sudden thought sent him to a high shelf at the very back of his closet, and he pulled down a box that he'd shoved up there when he was drowning in anger and pain. Pictures, mostly, many of the oldest ones with Duncan and Lilly. He smiled when he found the one he was looking for, Veronica in her soccer uniform, goofing around with Lilly. It wasn't the day he'd met her, but it must have been soon after. She couldn't have been more than 12 or 13.

His fingers brushed across the paper image of her face as he tried to remember the feel of her skin and the scent of her hair.

_Veronica._

Something in the news anchor's face, some sudden change of expression, caught Logan's eye as he was replacing the top on the box of pictures.

_This just in. We're still awaiting word on the victims' names, but what we CAN tell you is that several of the Neptune High students were NOT on the bus when it went over the cliff. We're not sure why at this point, but some of the students, in what turned out to be the luckiest decision of their young lives, decided to hire a car for the return trip to Neptune. So we have definite survivors, folks, and I've just been given the go-ahead to release those names._

Logan could hardly believe it. There were survivors. Survivors. He couldn't move, could scarcely breathe.

_Remember, folks, these are the survivors, all well and out of harm's way._

He picked up a piece of paper and began to read out the names.

_Richard Casablancas, Jr._

Dick was okay! Good, good.

_Cassidy Casablancas._

That made sense. They'd have been together.

_Gia Goodman._

Who?

_Duncan Kane._

Duncan. But then that must mean...

The anchor stopped, put down the paper.

_And that appears to be all, all who survived this terrible tragedy..._

Logan sat there stunned. Duncan...but not Veronica? It made no sense.

_Wait. We have word on another survivor. Yes, those already noted and also...Veronica Mars._

And also Veronica Mars.

_Veronica. _

Veronica was alive, she was safe. It took him a minute to take it in.

And then he let out that breath, the one he'd been holding for hours, and on the heels of that breath came a sob, and then another, and pretty soon Logan was crying like he hadn't since Veronica had held him in her arms in the lobby of the Sunset Regent. He cried from relief, from exhaustion, from the sheer weight of the emotional shitstorm that had become his life.

Without another thought, he toed off his shoes, turned out the light, and threw himself across his bed, where he slept for 12 uninterrupted hours.

xxxxxxxxxx

When Logan awoke the next morning, it was with a feeling of relief, even euphoria. Veronica hadn't died. All his friends had survived. Oh, he knew there were some kids, other kids, kids he didn't know, that hadn't been so lucky. And he knew he should care about what had happened to them, but somehow he just couldn't. _His_ world, _his _family, had gotten so small of late that he couldn't have afforded to lose even one more person.

He could feel the sand still stuck between his fingers and in his hair, so he dragged himself to the shower, where his stomach reminded him that he'd had nothing to eat since yesterday's breakfast.

And throughout his shower, and his makeshift breakfast, and most of the way to school, he rode that natural high, a big grin plastered on his face. He could hardly wait to get to school and see them all. His friends. Dick...Duncan...Veronica.

And that's when it hit him. Hit him so hard that his breathing became ragged and he had to pull over to the side of the road.

Veronica was alive. And she was safe. _But she still wasn't his._

He'd learned two things about himself during yesterday's ordeal. He was still in love with Veronica Mars; he couldn't pretend otherwise. That was the first thing.

But he also knew that he couldn't wear his heart on his sleeve, couldn't keep making himself vulnerable, or he'd never survive his final year of high school. Nope. What he needed to do was to take those feelings and bury them so deep that even if he went looking for them, they'd be impossible to find.

His breathing evened out and he felt himself relax, as he understood fully what he'd have to do to protect himself.

And maybe there was even a third lesson, learned from those who _had_ died, long before their appointed time. Life was just too fucking short to spend it in pain and misery, hoping for things that were never going to happen. You just never fucking _knew. _ Maybe there was a bus waiting to ram into him as he drove to school, and he wouldn't even make it through today.

Logan shifted gears, pulling away from the curb and continuing toward the high school. _Hell, yeah_! That was going to be his new mantra. _Life was just too fucking short!_

Maybe he'd even throw a party.


End file.
